Improving bank operations: A case study at BancOhio/Ohio National Bank

The paper describes the procedures employed at Ohio National Bank to improve operations of the check handling and clearing system. It illustrates the approaches utilized to (1) schedule messenger vehicles, (2) determine worker shift schedules, (3) forecast daily work loads and (4) develop work priorities. These four tasks improved productivity and reduced float at the bank. Also discussed is the data required to utilize the formal planning procedures illustrated. The paper indicates the financial impact of this work and future efforts in a dynamic banking environment.     

Violence at work: An issue for the 1990s

Violence and conflict appear to be increasingly common aspects of everyday life, to the point where people take them into consideration when planning their activities and feel anxious about their possible occurrence. It is not only actual violence which offers a contemporary source of stress but also the threat of violence, although subjective estimates of risk are not always accurate. For example, it would appear that while the elderly feel the most threatened, the greatest risk is to those in their late teens and early twenties. This discrepancy between objective and subjective risk is understandable in terms of the different factors which have been shown to drive the subjective assessment of risk: availability of information, controllability and magnitude of outcome. Often it is the media which provides us with the information that we have on violence, and it is that presentation of information which helps shape our assessment of risk. For example, attacks by young persons on the elderly may be more dramatic and newsworthy than, albeit more frequent, attacks on other young persons. Thus they are reported to a greater extent and a distorted impression of risk begins to develop, which may be reinforced by realistic feelings of potential helplessness by the elderly in the face of any such attack, and fear of the magnitude of the consequences of violence. Whatever the real basis for a fear of violence, the available statistics in most European and North American countries suggests that, even taking into account the effects of reporting bias, acts of violence are increasing.     

Clozapine: a new drug for schizophrenia

Clozapine, a new drug for schizophrenia, was recently released for use. We have described the drug and nursing care involved for patients who are on acute inpatient unit for a trial of the drug. From our early observations, clozapine appears to be a promising drug for patients who have not responded to standard neuroleptics.     

ESTIMATING EQUATIONS AND NON-LINEAR FUNCTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

A nonlinear functional relationship is defined as an R-dimensional manifold in P-dimensional space. The formulation of the model may be explicitly in terms of R-dimensional vectors of incidental parameters or implicitly by a (P-R)-dimensional vector function of constraints. The objective is to estimate and make inference about a K-vector of parameters θ which defines the manifold. Each observed P-vector has its expectation lying on the manifold, and the error vector has a variance matrix defined in terms of a further vector of parameters The theory of estimating equations in the presence of incidental parameters is extended and applied to the explicit formulation, to give equations suitable for estimating θ given knowledge of only the first two moments. The method has a geometrical interpretation. Estimating equations for are chosen to be those which would be optimal if the normality assumption were true. First order corrections to the biases of these estimates are included. An example where the manifold is a circle centred on the origin is used to illustrate the theory. Further examples incorporate more general features, including the estimation of two variance parameters and estimation in higher dimensions.     

Investigating the link between the Pill and cancer

Does the contraceptive pill increase the risk of cancer? The question has been asked ever since the pill was introduced, and is one that must worry almost every woman in the country. Small wonder that when the results of a long-term study, which began 40 years ago, came out in the autumn it made front-page headlines. As Phil Hannaford explains, answering the question was not straightforward.     

BANK CAPITAL AND LIQUIDITY CREATION IN ASIA PACIFIC

We calculate liquidity creation for a large sample of commercial banks in 14 Asia‐Pacific economies from 2005 to 2012. We find that banks in this region created $7.83 trillion in liquidity in 2012, or approximately 3.24 times the total liquidity created in 2005. Large banks and those based in Developing Asia created the highest liquidity. We also investigate the bicausal relationship between liquidity creation and regulatory capital and find that the trade‐off between the benefits of financial stability induced by enhanced capital requirements and those of higher liquidity creation is applicable to all of the sample banks, regardless of bank size and economic region. (JEL G21, G28)     

Training for No Secrets : A strategic initiative

Current Department of Health guidance on multi-agency policy and procedure to protect vulnerable adults from abuse requires the design and implementation of comprehensive training programmes. This paper identifies three issues of critical significance to the development of a local training strategy, namely, language ('vulnerability' versus 'rights'), the relative significance of 'awareness', and the scheduling of training in relation to overall policy development. These issues are illustrated by a local training course which, in addition to imparting basic information on the new agenda and locating the latter within the wider context of adult welfare services generally, actively facilitated practitioners' contributions to multi-agency policy development. The outcomes of this initiative are reported in terms of the Department of Health's radical vision of 'mainstreaming' staff involvement.